Difference between revisions of "Server Dell PowerEdge T410"

Revision as of 16:53, 14 September 2010

Manuals

here, online version of the main manual here with chapter on LED status here

Install notes

BIOS

- Activate Virtualization support
- Power Management -> OS Control
- Report kbd errors: NO

Debian Squeeze

Still testing at time of writing but frozen so almost stable ;-)

Installing squeeze from daily image (17/08/2010)
- Complains about missing bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-5.0.0.j3.fw & bnx2/bnx2-rv2p-09-5.0.0.j3.fw
  - Get it on another machine and put it on USB stick: aptitude install firmware-bnx2 ; cp /lib/firmware/bnx2/bnx2-*-09-5.0.0.j3.fw /media/XXXX
  - Actually I had also an additional Intel network card so I could have skipped this step...
- Partitionning:
  there is a first primary partition for Dell Utilities (FAT16), I left it just in case...;
  there is also a second primary partition: 2Gb of FAT32, empty, so I deleted it.
  partition #2: primary 10Gb ext3 / label=ROOT
  partition #3: primary 16Gb swap
  partition #5: logical 2Tb physical volume for LVM
  Configure LVM / ok to write table / Create VG with sda5, called vg0 (will be used by XEN)
- Tasksel: SSH & standard utilities
- Reboot
SSH: PermitRootLogin no / ssh-copy-id ...
Install mc, screen, sudo (adduser xxx sudo)
Renaming interfaces (always easier to remember what's plugged where...)
- à la ifrename
  - aptitude install ifrename
  - Create /etc/iftab then reboot

intelG mac 00:1b:21:xx:xx:xx
intelD mac 00:1b:21:xx:xx:xx
bcm1   mac 84:2b:2b:xx:xx:xx
bcm2   mac 84:2b:2b:xx:xx:xx

- à la udev
  - actually we don't need ifrename because udev is now doing the same, see /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules, you can simply change the NAME key
- Be sure the old name is not used anywhere else in your config, typically in /etc/network/interfaces

XEN: installation

see notes on Debian wiki
aptitude install xen-linux-image-2.6.32-5-xen-amd64 xen-tools xen-utils
backup /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp
edit /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp, and uncomment line "(network-script network-bridge)" or for a non-default interface ethX:

(network-script 'network-bridge netdev=ethX bridge=xenbr0')

reboot
aptitude remove --purge linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64 linux-image-2.6-amd64
/etc/default/grub => GRUB_DEFAULT=2
update-grub
reboot
cat /proc/xen/capabilities #(to check xend is running)

XEN: guest creation

If you've a proxy it's much easier to have it defined in the environment variables:
- Edit /etc/environment

http_proxy=http://myproxy:port

- Logout/login
Edit the config file for creating images (/etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf) to your needs:

--- xen-tools.conf.orig 2010-05-30 22:42:25.000000000 +0200
+++ xen-tools.conf      2010-08-17 17:47:35.000000000 +0200
@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@
 # LVM volume group here instead
 #
 ##
-# lvm = vg0
+lvm = vg0
 
 
 #
@@ -125,12 +125,12 @@
 #  Disk and Sizing options.
 ##
 #
-size   = 4Gb      # Disk image size.
+size   = 8Gb      # Disk image size.
 memory = 128Mb    # Memory size
 swap   = 128Mb    # Swap size
 # noswap = 1      # Don't use swap at all for the new system.
 fs     = ext3     # use the EXT3 filesystem for the disk image.
-dist   = `xt-guess-suite-and-mirror -s` # Default distribution to install.
+dist   = squeeze  # Default distribution to install.
 image  = sparse   # Specify sparse vs. full disk images.
 
 #
@@ -166,7 +166,7 @@
 #
 # Uncomment this if you wish the images to use DHCP
 #
-# dhcp = 1
+dhcp = 1
 
 
 ##
@@ -184,7 +184,7 @@
 # Uncomment the following line if you wish to interactively setup
 # a new root password for images.
 #
-# passwd = 1
+passwd = 1
 
 #
 # If you'd like all accounts on your host system which are not present
@@ -254,10 +254,10 @@
 #
 #  You may specify the things to use here:
 #
-# serial_device = hvc0 #default
+serial_device = hvc0 #default
 # serial_device = tty1
 #
-# disk_device = xvda #default
+disk_device = xvda #default
 # disk_device = sda
 #

XEN quickref

Xen Tools, Xen Shell

Sagemath guest

xen-create-image --hostname=sagemath --memory=12288 --swap=12288 --vcpus=20
WARNING strangely the default root password was disabled with a '*' in /etc/shadow so impossible to log in. I had to mount manually the lv (/dev/vg0/sagemath-disk) to remove the '*'
One may prefer to setup the password interactively when creating the image with xen-create-image ... --passwd (or setup passwd=1 in /etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf as I've now shown in the above diff file)
lvm> lvcreate -L 1000G -n sagemath-data vg0
/etc/xen/sagemath.cfg: add data volume:

root        = '/dev/xvda2 ro'
disk        = [
                  'phy:/dev/vg0/sagemath-disk,xvda2,w',
                  'phy:/dev/vg0/sagemath-swap,xvda1,w',
                  'phy:/dev/vg0/sagemath-data,xvda3,w',
              ]

xm create -c /etc/xen/sagemath.cfg
Hook the data drive as /home
- mkfs.ext4 /dev/xvda3
- In /etc/fstab: /dev/xvda3 /home ext4 noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
- mount /home
Install sage
- apt-get install aria2
- cd /opt
- aria2c http://www.sagemath.org/mirror/linux/64bit/meta/sage-4.5.2-linux-64bit-ubuntu_10.04_lts-x86_64-Linux.tar.lzma.metalink
- tar x --lzma -f sage-4.5.2-linux-64bit-ubuntu_10.04_lts-x86_64-Linux.tar.lzma
- cd sage-4.5.2-linux-64bit-ubuntu_10.04_lts-x86_64-Linux
- Edit sage and set SAGE_ROOT="/opt/sage-4.5.2-linux-64bit-ubuntu_10.04_lts-x86_64-Linux"
- ./sage
- sage> notebook.setup()
  Provide FQDN for TLS certificate generation

Misc notes

Boot & DHCP

I've still sometimes some issues at boot time when the xenbr0 bridge doesn't catch its IP...
In those cases I find dhclient still hooked to the non-existing bnx1 IF (which was renamed pbnx1 by XEN). I've to kill it and start a similar dhclient on IF xenbr0.
Finally I renamed the default interface as eth0 and called the xen bridge script without parameters: (network-script network-bridge)

Allocating too much memory

I tried to create two guests with each 12Gb of RAM while the host had only 16Gb in total. I would have expected a nice handling of the error but it froze xend and I could even not shutdown properly.
And, oh, BTW, no, xen doesn't support memory overcommitment

@@ Line 157: / Line 157: @@
 ===Boot & DHCP===
 I've still sometimes some issues at boot time when the xenbr0 bridge doesn't catch its IP...
-<br>In those cases I find dhclient still hooked to the unexistant bnx1 IF (which was renamed pbnx1 by XEN). I've to kill it and start a similar dhclient on IF xenbr0.
+<br>In those cases I find dhclient still hooked to the non-existing bnx1 IF (which was renamed pbnx1 by XEN). I've to kill it and start a similar dhclient on IF xenbr0.
 <br>Finally I renamed the default interface as eth0 and called the xen bridge script without parameters: (network-script network-bridge)
 ===Allocating too much memory===
 I tried to create two guests with each 12Gb of RAM while the host had only 16Gb in total. I would have expected a nice handling of the error but it froze xend and I could even not shutdown properly.